When libraries become newsrooms: A recap of our 2026 Zoom session - Incite at Columbia University

What if journalism isn’t the starting point?

That question, raised by Terry Parris Jr., founder of the Library Newsroom Project, opened the first of a series of online events the Engaged Journalism Exchange is hosting this year in partnership with News Futures in the lead up to an August 5th in-person event in New Orleans. The series focuses on civic media efforts that go beyond traditional journalism to support community-building, and the May 21 session took on one of the Exchange’s self-described “messy questions”: How can libraries engage communities with civic information and storytelling?

Before Parris Jr. spoke, Cole Goins and Megan Lucero of Journalism + Design at The New School presented a framework for understanding what civic information-sharing looks like in practice. Their “Community News Roles” model breaks journalism into eight functions: facilitating, documenting, commenting, inquiring, sense-making, navigating, amplifying, and enabling. The argument is that community members are already performing these functions whether or not they identify as journalists.

Read more at Medium.